After noting it has been awhile since I posted anything
here, it seemed like I should make a few comments about things.

Things seem like they are going pretty well. I have been
doing a bit of consulting on non-Linux things which have
allowed me some freedom and I work for Wild Open Source now
in a management capacity I guess you could say. I enjoy the
people there since they are people I have seen somewhere
before :).

Other things I have been doing is picking back up some minor
bits of consulting work in the systems and software
deployment areas. I used to do a fair bit of systems and
software deployment at this little clothing company I worked
at for awhile.

Other stuff is learning a bit about Apache, PHP, and other
things which strike my fancy. I am no bigtime coder but I
do like to learn how things work and how I can make things
work differently.

I was very sorry to see Lokigames fade away; I was a very
happy and challenged customer of theirs and I would like to
thank them publicly for their Sid Meier stuff especially;
but I also have spent many an enjoyable hour with SimCity
and a few other titles.

I have not really played much with my IPAQ running familiar
linux lately unfortunately. I noticed that the
handhelds.org crew released a new version which I should
definitely try. My IPAQ works so well now as a mp3 player
with an IBM 1g microdrive in it, its kind of a shame to
reflash things. I also have been using dillo on it and
playing a bit with the ion window manager both on the ipaq
and a desktop I have.

I don't know that I will become more timely posting here
since I seem to not get to the site so often of late. I was
very sorry to read of the troubles that
hacker had with his
relocation. I never had that level of destruction but once
in the military all my stuff ended up going to the wrong
military base. Nothing to compare with his story about the
destruction of stuff.

Been over a month since I did a diary thing. Incredible
month and a month of really enjoying doing nothing. Went to
lunch today with a few Linuxcare and ex-Linuxcare folks.
Its nice to see them especially over Burritos at "two
pineapples".

Talked about a lot of stuff going on in the world today and
a bit about Linux.

I read aftyde is going off to
Linuxworld on the train. That sounds really neat! Have a
good time, Art. I look forward to lots of advogato diary
entries from different spots on the trip!

I spent a lot of time reading a variety of advogato material
the last few days. Very interesting and revealing reading.
I spent some years in another "community" which seemed, at
times, possessed by levels of challenge, dialogue, perhaps
even hatred. I actually wrote back then an ethnology of
that community because it became an interesting
anthropological study to watch them.

I get to say goodbye to someone I enjoyed working with and
hello to a friend I used to work with in another lifetime.
Many years ago in some desert wandering I worked with a
person who had this particular talent that I found to be
amazing. My friend, Theo, not involved at all in Open
Source or Linux; but instead a guy that does Human Osteology
called me this evening. What is so unusual and unique is
that I only saw him once a year if that as he flew through
to new places. Theo and I worked together so many times in
so many places doing other things; that hearing his voice at
a totally unexpected time was bittersweet. It reminded me
of other times, of other places, of other things I have
done. It also reminded me I should say goodbye to
hacker after his recent diary
entry and thank him for always being there for us, for never
being too busy to help, and for just being himself.

Thanks also to another person that I suddenly feel like
finding again. Once, many years ago, I stood at a decision
point. Perhaps others have stood the same ground.
Considering what would work, what would not, and what
direction their lives should embark on. I left one thing I
loved truly for something I thought I would love and my
friend RWR, told me, "always know where you are and what you
are doing". In archeology, one often finds a mentor; a
person who guides and helps and fosters an understanding.
RWR was mine. He taught me about not only archeology but
about life and how to live it in full measure.

Priceless advice I have carried with me and taken out when
making a decision. Some of the best and brightest people I
ever met were at Linuxcare. But back "in the day", I
watched others that were gifted and imaginative and
insightful do work so completely different that it invites
comparison. Back then I was a nomad, tromping through
deserts and forests across the Desert Southwest, the central
plains, and the fantastic and beautiful Mojave Desert.

Tomorrow marks the first time in 3 years I
don't have a job to go to. I still have a few things I want
to make an
attempt at though. One is using Markybob's debian
netinstaller cd on a system here, reading my mysql book to
make an attempt at learning a bit more about it, and working
on a scalable architecture approach that I may just get paid
for.

This is actually a great month to be unemployed. I have two
kids which I am really going to enjoy this year without
having to rush off to meetings or be on the road on business
trips.

I think there are lots of interesting possibilities for
things I want to do. I am definitely interested in working
on building out approaches to build custom Linux
distributions which are modular, replicable, and scalable.
I also want to do one of those Linux from scratch things
just to play a bit and learn a bit more about how things
work under the hood.

I also am being retained by Linuxcare as a contractor which
means I am gone; but I am not gone. I always like decisive
departures :)

I get to see LenZ here and wish
him congratulations on his marriage! Long time, no see,
LenZ. Hope all is well for you.

From my last post, I had started messing with
Amanda to backup my
home network which includes a number of Windows and Linux
systems and two laptops. This works very well I am happy to
say! Amanda is a very nice and easily configurable backup
program. I also use it on a OpenBSD firewall box.

Not much else worthy of note. My last day at Linuxcare
approaches next week. I have a lot of feelings about it.
Its fair to say that I will miss a lot of the people there
now and once there.

Started playin around with AMANDA to get an idea about how
it works, what I can gain from it to backup my smallish home
lan. Pretty cool and easy to setup. There is a deb package
for it that works pretty well too. I am using a Exabyte
8700 tape drive with the 2.4.13 kernel and the "old adaptec
driver". The new driver seems to want to get a "message"
from the device and the exabyte does not speak that language
at all.

I also am exploring backing up my windows systems using
SAMBA and a BSD box with a amanda client running on it.

If you want an easily configured backup solution, I think
AMANDA seems pretty solid. I also tried AFBACKUP but I
could not get the authentication to work right. ARKEIA is
free to download but I could not get a network problem fixed
that plagued me through 3 days of trying.

I attended the Linux Showcase only one day due to illness
but would have liked to attend the Friday evening
handhelds.org BOF but could not.

In other news, my days at Linuxcare are waning away and
Christmas approaches. Appears that I will be off work
during the holidays and this means I can be home with my
wife and kids for the whole season. That's a nice change.

Been an interesting some months, have to say. Built a new
system for some work going on and took it from debian stable
to unstable in about an hour.

Spent a lot of time at work playing with new laptops which
is kinda nice and then writing the reports which is not so
nice. Began working on associated documentation on a pet
project of mine which must live in seclusion for now. I
have a feeling by first of next year it will not be so. Way
to early to speculate on what it will mean and to whom, but
its fun and rewarding doing the research and then writing
the documents.

Not a very lot to say these days. Sometimes its fun to
write; other times its fun to lurk. Lurking was something
almost forced by pacbell today in the East Bay from Fremont
to Newark and Union City. No dsl, no nothing for 7 hours.
This was building up yesterday with a series of shorter
outages. I also have this feeling that performance seems
hampered here. I guess I could go looking for another ISP
but I have been here for almost 3 years and its still more
of a local business.

Well, its been almost 2 weeks since I posted anything here.
Been pretty busy working on a variety of laptops which seem
challenging to get Linux working on. I think I managed to
learn a bit about how to compile X from CVS since I have
probably done it about 30 times now give or take.

Have not had much time to mess with my IPAQ lately and I
wanted to take a look at some of the networking stuff
especially with regard to wireless.

I suppose one could say things are moving right along.
Halloween, and my son is very excited. My daughter, who is
three, is totally taken in by house decorations and runs
around yelling "boo" all the time.

I think I will have a lot of interesting things to say
around about 1 December or so :)

My big announcement, at least for me, is I am leaving
Linuxcare on 30 November 2001. A lot of reasons, some
personal, some professional. Am I happy? I think so. Do I
have something to look forward to? I definitely think so.

Many thanks for the kind words
ianmacd . I don't feel quite
able to address some of your very well written questions
right now. I think that you know the truth though.

Thanks to that group at Linuxcare that has always been there
for me, helping me, sometimes being that guru that is so
necessary. I have always felt so close and through the next
weeks I don't feel any further away. You are all in my
thoughts and I have enjoyed the work and play and the trips
to other planets (inside joke for the Linuxcare folks!).